IMPORTANT: the symptoms of psychiatric drugs withdrawal can sometimes look exactly like the “mental illness” that the medications were prescribed for in the first place.
People can become “psychotic,” anxious, or any other psychiatric symptom from drug withdrawal itself, not because of their psychiatric “disorder” or condition.
When someone goes off a psychiatric drug they can have anxiety, mania, panic, depression and other painful symptoms. These may be the same, or even worse, than what got called psychosis or mental disorder before the drug was taken. Typically people are then told that this proves their illness has come back and they therefore need the drug. However, it may be the withdrawal effect from the drug that is causing these symptoms.
Withdrawal symptoms do not necessarily prove you need a psychiatric drug any more than headaches after you stop drinking coffee prove you need caffeine, or delirium after stopping alcohol shows you need to drink alcohol. It just means your brain has become dependent on the drug, and needs time to adjust to being off it. Psychiatric drugs are not like insulin for a diabetic: they are a tool or coping mechanism.
Scientists used to believe that the brain could not grow new cells or heal itself, but this is now known to be untrue. Everyone can heal. A strong and healthy body with good lifestyle and positive outlook will help support and nurture your brain and body to heal. When you have been on psych drugs for years, it can however sometimes take years to successfully reduce or go off them. Many people on these drugs, especially long-term neuroleptic anti-psychotics, develop brain injury and damage. This may not be permanent, but sometimes people live the rest of their lives with these brain changes. You may find that the goal of going off completely might not be right for you. You may feel better staying on them, and decide instead to reduce your medication or stay at the same dosage, and focus on other ways to improve your life.
The Shock Doctrine – a short film by Alfonso Cuarón (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; Children of Men) and Naomi Klein (No Logo; Fences and Windows; The Shock Doctrine); directed and edited by Jonás Cuarón.
巴氏較為人熟悉的小說《眼睛的故事》（Histoire de l’Oeil，英譯Story of the Eye），發表於1927年，至1979年始被譯成英文。巴氏的小說，驚艷者眾，談不上「偉大」，其為了賺取稿費而書的短篇，起初也僅被當成二流色情小說去讀，到五、六十年代，評論界才「重新發現」它的僭越性質。其中羅倫．巴特1963年寫的短評〈The Metaphor of the Eye〉，為讀者對這部半自傳小說的賞析推展到一個新的層次。巴特提出，《眼睛的故事》中的色情想像乃非發自「陽物」（Phallic）想像的色情系統；而且，貫穿整部小說出現的各種意象物：眼球、鬥牛的睪丸、雞蛋，與尿液、牛奶、星光、太陽光暈等，成為了兩列對應的隱喻（Metaphor），而兩列隱喻互相交涉與挪用為一換喻（Metanomy）。在巴特而言，《眼睛的故事》並非幾位未成年主角的情慾勾當、涉瘋瀕死與出逃之旅的記事，而是上述換喻物在情節中的行進。小說的情慾主義亦與de Sade 的百科全書式的周章繁瑣大異其趣，巴特認為《眼睛的故事》是傾向詩化的一種書寫，巴塔耶關注的是意義（Signification）發生的本質與條件多於意義的傳達，小說中的場景僅是為了上述「換喻鏈」之達成而設置：「如果我們在夜晚的郊野，那是因為月亮會從雲端冒出，照見Marcelle的窗後那床單拍揚、它上面的一處濕了的污漬；如果場景設於馬德里，那是因為那兒有鬥牛，就有活剝公牛睪丸和Granero的眼晴給挖出……」是以，「眼睛」的飛揚換諭、行進過渡而所指不穩，自己成為一個故事／歷史（Histoire）。
—— unmoving, exactly under the arch. She was entirely black, simply there, as distressing as emptiness, a hole. I realised she wasn’t frolicking, wasn’t joking, and indeed that, beneath the garment enfolding her, she was mindless: rapt, absent. Then all the drunken exhilaration drained out of me, then I knew that She had not lied, that she was GOD. Her presence had about it the unintelligible out-and-out simplicity of a stone – right in the middle of the city I had the feeling of being in the mountains at night time, lost in a lifeless, hollow solitude. (注3)
Love was dead in those eyes, they contained a daybreak aureate chill, a transparence wherein I read death’s letter. And everything swam drowned in that dreaming stare…
「故事之於人生的意義」，巴塔耶認為在於它源自一種痛苦、一種狂暴，作者唯有接受著它所軀使，作品才能揭示經驗的限界、看見生命的其他面相。(注4) 巴塔耶目睹西班牙內戰和兩次世界大戰，倖存於一個淪陷的歐洲，不就是一個焦慮失常、因及渴望自由以至於厭世自毁的人麼？完稿後擱陳多於廿載始於1957年出版的《正午的藍色》(Le Bleu du ciel，英譯The Blue of Noon)，講酗酒頹廢、戀屍癖的主角Henri Troppmann與病萎絕望的妻Dorothea在各自無法收拾的人生中奔趕著不能自拔，正是此種「災難後遺」的寫照，然而它卻是於災難以前所書。
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(1) 收錄於 G. Bataille. My Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man. Trans. Austryn Wainhouse. London & NY: Marion Boyars, 2003
(2) 同上，p.11-20
(3) 同上，p.152
(4) 1957年初版作者前言。見G. Bataille. Blue of Noon. Trans. Harry Mathews. London: Paladin, 1988. pp153-5.
(5) 收錄於 G. Bataille. My Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man. Trans Austryn Wainhouse. London & NY: Marion Boyars, 2003. pp13
本文刪節版本原刊《字花》#5 期，頁124-126，12/2006-1/2007
To Be a Mental Patient
by Rae Unzicker (1948-2001)
To be a mental patient is to be stigmatized, ostracized, socialized, patronized, psychiatrized.
To be a mental patient is to have everyone controlling your life but you. You’re watched by your shrink, your social worker, your friends, your family. And then you’re diagnosed as paranoid.
To be a mental patient is to live with the constant threat and possibility of being locked up at any time, for almost any reason.
To be a mental patient is to live on $82 a month in food stamps, which won’t let you buy Kleenex to dry your tears. And to watch your shrink come back to his office from lunch, driving a Mercedes Benz.
To be a mental patient is to take drugs that dull your mind, deaden your senses, make you jitter and drool and then you take more drugs to lessen the “side effects.”
To be a mental patient is to apply for jobs and lie about the last few months or years, because you’ve been in the hospital, and then you don’t get the job anyway because you’re a mental patient. To be a mental patient is not to matter.
To be a mental patient is never to be taken seriously.
To be a mental patient is to be a resident of a ghetto, surrounded by other mental patients who are as scared and hungry and bored and broke as you are.
To be a mental patient is to watch TV and see how violent and dangerous and dumb and incompetent and crazy you are.
To be a mental patient is to be a statistic.
To be a mental patient is to wear a label, and that label never goes away, a label that says little about what you are and even less about who you are.
To be a mental patient is to never to say what you mean, but to sound like you mean what you say.
To be a mental patient is to tell your psychiatrist he’s helping you, even if he is not.
To be a mental patient is to act glad when you’re sad and calm when you’re mad, and to always be “appropriate.”
To be a mental patient is to participate in stupid groups that call themselves therapy. Music isn’t music, its therapy; volleyball isn’t sport, it’s therapy; sewing is therapy; washing dishes is therapy. Even the air you breathe is therapy and that’s called “the milieu.”
To be a mental patient is not to die, even if you want to — and not cry, and not hurt, and not be scared, and not be angry, and not be vulnerable, and not to laugh too loud — because, if you do, you only prove that you are a mental patient even if you are not.
And so you become a no-thing, in a no-world, and you are not.
SS: New psychiatric symptoms created by the very drugs people are told will help them recover?
RW: Absolutely. The most obvious case is with the antidepressants. A certain percentage of people placed on the SSRIs because they have some form of depression will suffer either a manic or psychotic attack — drug-induced. This is well recognized. So now, instead of just dealing with depression, they’re dealing with mania or psychotic symptoms. And once they have a drug-induced manic episode, what happens? They go to an emergency room, and at that point they’re newly diagnosed. They’re now said to be bipolar and they’re given an antipsychotic to go along with the antidepressant; and, at that point, they’re moving down the path to chronic disability.
